Came across an old post on Joel Shepherd's blog in which he expounds on the worldbuilding behind the Cassandra Kresnov series. As you know, I loved these books and feel that they should appeal to anyone who enjoyed Richard Morgan's science fiction novels. And I try to tell myself that if I talk about them often enough, then maybe more and more people will discover this intelligent and ass-kicking series!

There’s no doubt Tanusha is inspired by my experience with certain emerging Asian megalopolises, though it is completely unlike any single one of them. For a start, most of the Asian cities I’ve been to are relatively poor, save for Tokyo and Singapore. Tanusha is phenomenally wealthy, it would be hard to survive there on a budget. It’s also a fairly utopian vision of the future in that it’s the end product of huge advances in urban planning and associated technologies, and functions like digital clockwork. There are no slums, no garbage in the streets, no ‘bad neighbourhoods’. Even the rich/poor divide, a feature of all cities today, is mitigated by planning that mixes all income levels together and gives everyone access to services, transport, etc.

Is any of this possible? There are urban planners today who believe that it probably is, and given how much better our cities have become in the past few hundred years, it would be silly to dismiss them. On the other hand, this kind of planning does smell suspiciously like socialism, and will be opposed by all those who dislike the association. My personal dislike of socialism stems from the fact that it usually doesn’t work. Those bits that do work, I tend to support. In Tanusha, we have a functioning form of socialism in urban planning, that works amazingly well. And of course, as a new settlement that literally descended from the heavens onto virgin land, its planners had the option of telling anyone who didn’t like it that they didn’t have to come. Plenty of other settlements in the galaxy, go find something else that suits you better.